Ionia Road Rage Shooting: Two Gun Owners Shoot, Kill Each Other

Two Michigan gun owners are dead after what is believed to have originated as a road rage incident.

The two men are said to have gotten into an argument while driving, which escalated on the road Wednesday night.

Identified as the two killed in the Ionia, Michigan shooting are James Pullum, 43, and Robert Taylor, 56. Both lived in Ionia, and it’s not clear how precisely the men became so enraged as to draw weapons and fire on one another fatally.

Local news source WZZM has a hazy initial account of the double gunshot death, describing the incident in a way that makes it seem as senseless as it sounds at first glance.

According to the station, Pullum and Taylor pulled into a car wash and began shooting after the altercation broke out:

“Witnesses tell WZZM 13 a one driver was following another driver too closely. The first driver pulled into the Wonder Wand Car Wash parking lot and the other driver followed them into the parking lot… Witnesses say the driver of the following car fired shots, and the first driver returned fire. Both drivers were shot and killed.”

Two passengers in Pullam’s vehicle were unharmed, but it also appears that neither man survived long enough to even be transported to a hospital after the deadly clash.

As both Pullam and Taylor were killed in the gun fight, investigators are having a hard time piecing together the chain of events leading up to the deadly incident.

However, cops do confirm both of the Michigan men involved in the fatal road rage shooting were legally licensed with concealed carry permits. It has not yet been explained whether one or the other may have been more legally culpable had either survived.

Nice going NRA. Just the country you want. Which one was the good man with the gun that stopped the bad man with the gun, Wayne La ? I guess we will never know. Oh shucks! They can ask each other when they arrive in hell.

okay so this is the guns fault?! No unstable person that pulled first is. I have heard of road rage before where people use hammers and stones. We don't see these in the news. Guns are tools in the right hands so are hammers, but the issue here is that people need to calm the hell down. Only one person here is a victim the person that drew to defend himself. I am sure that we will never hear the real story, but one of them I am sure has a history of talking about being a bad @$$, and should have not had a gun. Lame comments about Dodge city and NRA is not going to do anything, but start a war about guns. You will not see the 10,000 stories a day where guns helped the regular person defend or scare off someone that was willing to do them harm. I carry, and my weapon has done just that.

They cloak these incidents under the dismissive and derisive term of "road rage", so that they can hide the underlying traffic violations that bring them about. We do not know who the original aggressor was at all, with the given information, but I assert that the person pulling into the car wash was no less willing to engage in a confrontation that the other driver, and therefore illustrates just as simply that he may well have been the original aggressor.

I am most willing to confront myself, under a lot of circumstances. That being said, being armed and able to defend myself if need be, I would have continued driving and dialed 911 if I thought that the situation were worth all of this-regardless of which vehicle I was operating.

That being the case, I, like you, find it very weak to place the blame on firearms.

They cloak these incidents under the dismissive and derisive term of "road rage", so that they can hide the underlying traffic violations that bring them about. We do not know who the original aggressor was at all, with the given information, but I assert that the person pulling into the car wash was no less willing to engage in a confrontation that the other driver, and therefore illustrates just as simply that he may well have been the original aggressor.

I am most willing to confront myself, under a lot of circumstances. That being said, being armed and able to defend myself if need be, I would have continued driving and dialed 911 if I thought that the situation were worth all of this-regardless of which vehicle I was operating.

That being the case, I find it very weak to place the blame on firearms.

America has been Dodge City for a very long time, with the Sheriff equally guilty of being a gunslinger. The NRA and the Tea Party have little or nothing to do with that, and since I do not affiliate myself with either, I feel free to suggest that they may perhaps be the only agents trying to balance the scales.